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Comment by cimmanom | Hacker News Reader

There was a time when one could. The minimum wage was originally put in place to make sure a single wage earner could support a family.

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"To better understand how rents and affordability have changed over time, Apartment List analyzed Census data from 1960 - 2014. We find that inflation-adjusted rents have risen by 64%, but real household incomes only increased by 18%." -- https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-...

The graph lower down on the page is informative, too: only in Las Vegas and Austin did the median rent increase equally to the change in median renter income. In every other urban area, the rent went up faster.

There still are places you could. Skimming Zillow, you can get a 2br in Ohio for ~$450/mo.

Source for that claim?

Minimum wage has been $4-10/hr (inflation adjusted) throughout its history in USA; only about as high for the single-person poverty level ($6/hr for single, $10/hr equivalent for a family of 3)

https://bebusinessed.com/history/history-of-minimum-wage/

Rent and home values have gone up far faster.

So has the size of living spaces and the space allocation per person.

https://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/05/25/the-size-of-...

That article puts the average living space sq ft/person at 233 sq ft (959 sq ft/home) in 1938, 387 sq ft/person (avg 1,289 sq ft/home) in 1960, and at 1,046 sq ft (2,657 sq ft/home) today.

That is, since 1960, the average house size has risen 106%, while real rent has risen by 64% (https://www.apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/rent-growth-since-...) since 1960. This would seem to suggest that today's real dollar buys more living space than real dollars past did, but that we're also demanding larger and larger housing.

This is small comfort to the low-income earner looking for housing, of course, but it's nonsensical to expect real housing prices to remain static while the living space allocated to each home grows.

I don't want a big space though, I just want it within an hour commute of my job. Who decided we wanted a few bigger spaces instead of more abundant smaller spaces?

When I bought my house 11 years ago, I could get an older small house or a 21st century house that was too big. I wanted a detached house but I don't need surplus space and I certainly don't want to deal with extra heating/cooling/cleaning/maintenance on that unneeded space. This was in an affordable mid-size town away from the coasts.

I ended up buying a small house that was built in the 1940s. I still wish I could have got something with modern wiring and no lead paint, but the same compact size. I can't tell if people are really demanding larger homes over time (per cheald above) or if people who aren't custom-building are forced to pick from a size range that has offered fewer small houses over time.

Interesting. My theory is that as the exurbs developed and people moved further away from the cities, home sizes got bigger. For instance if you drive 2 hours outside New York you can find huge 3 story houses that cost much less than a tiny house with a tiny yard in the older bedroom communities closer to the city.

But then you have a terribly long commute and as you said crazy amounts of upkeep. I think millennials saw their parents dealing with this and they value living closer to the city.

A time when unions were strong, when the 1% were taxed at ~90% and when "social security" and "pensions" were not evil words.

I feel zero sympathy for Americans and for the utter clusterfuck of misery that awaits them over the next 20 years. This is just the beginning.

There never was a 90% tax rate. That was a marginal rate, and there were massive deductions.

Would you name a country where 1% is taxed @ 90%? and what exactly would it acomplish so a google eng. would suddenly have 30-40K after tax income with 2 mil mortage that would really help make things right.

Google engineers are not the top whatever-percent that needs to be taxed like that, no. It's mostly the idle billionaire class. Warren Buffet agrees with me, FWIW.

What does it have to do with 1%? there are about 600 billionaires in US so they are like what 0.000001%?

>> 0.000001%?

No, 0.000184% (or 0.0000018, a factor of >180 different)

Marginal tax rates on very high earners were 90% in the US.

https://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-myth-of-the-90-pe...

That exaggerates how much they’d be taxed, but generally speaking such governments provide more public services (eg health care, quality education) and also build housing. Even in the USA, HUD used to have a bigger budget than the department of defense.

Could you please stop with the unsubstantive flamewar comments?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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